Division II football playoff picture appears set

Sunday

Nov 4, 2012 at 9:39 AM

It will not be official until Monday when the Interscholastic League will confirm some tie-breaking results, but it looks like the opening round of the Division II football playoffs this week-end will have Central at Johnston, Westerly at Cumberland,

John Gillooly Journal Staff Writer JohnGillooly2

It will not be official until Monday when the Interscholastic League will confirm some tie-breaking results, but it looks like the opening round of the Division II football playoffs this week-end will have Central at Johnston, Westerly at Cumberland, West Warwick at Mt. Hope and St. Raphael playing host to Woonsocket.

Johnston, Mt. Hope, Woonsocket and Westerly captured the four playoffs berths in Division II-A outright as Johnston took first place with a 7-0 record, Mt. Hope and Woonsocket tied for second with 5-2 records and Westerly finished fourth with a 4-3 mark. Mt. Hope should earn the sub-division's No. 2 seed on the strength of its regular season victory over Woonsocket. In Division II-B, Cumberland and St. Raphael won the top two seeds outright as Cumberland captured the regular season title with a 7-0 record and St. Raphael was second with a 5-2 record.

Three teams Rogers, Central and West Warwick, tied for the other two playoff berths with 4-3 records. In the first tie-breaker step all three teams had 1-1 records in head-to- head competition. The second tie-breaker is quality points for which each team involved in the tie is given a point for each victory posted by a team that the team involved in the tie had defeated.

A preliminary review shows West Warwick would earn 10 quality points while Central and Rogers each had eight points. In that case West Warwick would earn the third seed and Central would take the No. 4 seed based on its head-to-head victory over Rogers this past week-end.

The playoff lineup does not become official until the Interscholastic League confirms the tie-breaking results on Monday.

. The first round games will be played either this Friday or Saturday at the home sites of the top two seeds in each of the sub-divisions.